Textbook affordability has emerged as a potential barrier to academic success nationally.听, average student expenditures for these textbooks does not, indicating that more and more students are simply choosing not to purchase the required texts.听 Putting the textbook on reserve on the library will help somewhat, but the limitations to access are significant (open hours, competition for materials, costs). To address this issue, the 吃瓜头条 library has been encouraging faculty #GoOpen and explore听(OER), which are educational materials and resources offered freely and openly for anyone to use and听under some licenses to re-mix, improve and redistribute.
In practical terms, OER range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation. Variations of OER concepts can also include mixing open resources with library-licensed content. The听听at Temple University encourages faculty to 鈥渕ix resources from existing textbooks, licensed library collections, primary research content, open textbooks, multimedia or faculty鈥檚 self-authored material. What the final product looks like and how it is used is entirely up to the individual faculty member, but librarians are available to help with identifying and organizing resources.鈥
Thanks to generous funding from the Davis Foundation and the 吃瓜头条 SGA, the Library is expanding our Open Educational Resource (OER)听听we started last year (see flyer below). So if you think you are ready to #GoOpen, or you just want to learn more about it, reach out to your friendly librarians! We are here to help.
